Grand Champion Selection at the 2012 Royal Winter Fair. All sired by Braedale Goldwyn

At the Bullvine we wanted to determine the secret to Goldwyn’s tremendous success. When you look at Goldwyn’s conformation values for Chest Width (-3) and Body Depth (-4) you don’t instantly assume that he would be such a dominant type sire. In order to analyze Goldwyn’s type transmitting ability versus other great sires, we looked at his ability to sire the pinnacle of the breed – an Excellent cow. To make it a level playing field, we looked at sires that had a significant number of their daughters that were 5 years or older. In other words, that were eligible to go Excellent. Here is what we found.

Sire

Born

Conf

%GP

EX

VG

GP

G

F

%EX

ERBACRES DAMION

23-Jul-00

15

90

104

962

1254

257

7

4

BRAEDALE GOLDWYN

3-Jan-00

12

85

1017

10837

14493

4450

271

3

SHOREMAR BKB ALLEGRO

1-Sep-00

11

88

22

103

136

33

2

7

WILCOXVIEW JASPER

5-Jun-99

11

84

159

2517

3926

1211

56

2

INNWOOD TERRASON

21-Jun-96

10

82

238

1583

2562

914

48

4

LADINO PARK TALENT-IMP

31-Mar-98

10

79

517

4624

8843

3583

194

3

BKB AFFIRMED

17-Sep-01

10

84

3

77

144

42

0

1

RENAISSANCE TRIUMPHANT

7-May-95

9

88

101

446

434

131

5

9

FUSTEAD EMORY BLITZ

2-Mar-96

9

75

213

2118

4399

2062

153

2

SUNNYLODGE LINJET

1-Mar-92

8

87

282

392

1244

365

7

12

EK-OSEEANA ASPEN

4-May-00

8

83

24

101

161

54

6

7

REGANCREST DUNDEE

3-May-99

8

83

480

3871

5737

1984

91

4

ROYLANE JORDAN

1-May-96

8

81

195

1591

2583

1022

47

4

WINDY-KNOLL-VIEW PRIMETIME

8-Mar-00

7

81

91

529

468

317

9

6

DUPASQUIER CARISMA

25-Sep-01

7

83

59

714

1377

417

9

2

BOSS IRON

17-Jul-96

7

75

21

427

948

439

23

1

MARKWELL KITE

12-Mar-99

6

79

77

619

1017

432

27

4

VALLEYRIVER RUBEN REDMAN

17-Jun-99

6

80

91

814

1403

536

25

3

INDIANHEAD ENCOUNTER

28-Nov-99

5

79

17

200

353

148

7

2

OSEEANA ASTRONOMICAL

15-Sep-90

4

81

219

1157

1582

638

55

6

HANOVER-HILL-R SPIRIT

26-Dec-92

2

80

127

569

783

347

16

7

HANOVERHILL STARBUCK

26-Mar-79

-1

71

419

7257

19324

10818

177

1

DONNANDALE SKYCHIEF

24-Aug-86

-2

74

277

2573

4429

2423

124

3

MARSHFIELD ELEVATION TONY

6-Aug-72

-6

73

36

776

1869

960

7

1

What stands out when looking at these sires is that, even though Goldwyn has a high conformation index, there are no less than 12 sires (Linjet, Triumphant, Allegro, Aspen, Spirit, Primetime, Astronomical, Damion, Terrason, Dundee, Jordan and Kite) that actually had a higher percentage of their classified daughters score EX. Linjet, Triumphant, Allegro, Aspen, Spirit, Primetime, and Astronomical have more than double the percentage of their daughters scoring Excellent compared to Goldwyn.

Let’s take a closer look at Linjet, Triumphant, Allegro and Aspen. These sires not only have a higher percentage of daughters classifying Excellent, they also have a lower percentage scoring Good or lower. This highlighted something very interesting. On average, the 2 yr old daughters of this group of sires actually scored lower than Goldwyn’s daughters, but as they matured, they tended to significantly increase in score. Since the sire conformation index only uses classification scores as 2 year olds, this age improvement was not reflected in all of their conformation scores. Not being able to foretell this age improvement had a significant effect on semen sales of these bulls because most breeders use conformation to determine what type sires to use. As a result breeders missed out on these sires whose daughters matured later and scored higher later in life. This was especially true for Allegro and Aspen, whose later-maturing daughters developed outstanding dairy strength post first lactation.

The Bullvine Bottom Line

There is no question that Goldwyn has had the most number of Excellent daughters, nearly double the number produced by second place sire, LADINO PARK TALENT-IMP. But why is this? Is it the result of his great type transmitting ability, or is it his type proof combined with his high LPI proof resulted in much greater use. In other words, is it volume or is it quality? Undoubtedly, Goldwyn has been the most dominant type sire of the past decade, the bottom line question is,”Does Goldwyn dominate because of ability or because of opportunity?”